“Man be hanged!” exclaimed the schooner’s skipper in a rage. “And was it for such an absurd idea that you’ve nearly made me shiver the masts out of her? If it be a body, it can only be a corpse; for no man could swim out here from Kerguelen, and I’m blessed if he could live on those rocks of islands beyond!”
“There!” shouted the look-out man again, taking no notice of the other’s upbraiding, and seeming to be very anxious about whatever he had seen in the water. “It is quite close now on the lee bow.”
“Well, just to oblige you,” said the skipper, speaking loud enough for all on board to hear, “and to let you see for yourself what a confounded fool you are, I’ll fetch her up to it!”
“Bully for you, cap’en!” exclaimed Mr Lathrope, who with the others of the rescued party was on deck, not liking the rather fusty odour of the schooner’s cabin—which, to do justice to Mrs Major Negus, did smell most abominably of seal-oil, and even worse scents!
The floating object was soon approached on the schooner’s bearing away towards it; and a man in the bows, who had a boat-hook ready in his hand, quickly grappled it and pulled it alongside.
It was no man, however, as the look-out had thought; but only a piece of square timber which had evidently once formed some portion of a vessel’s belongings, and it was carved out roughly on the uppermost side to represent a female head and bust.
“I wasn’t far out in thinking it were a man in the water,” said the look-out man, gazing down on the object from his perch above, as the schooner’s skipper, giving the helm in charge of some one else, came forward to have a look over the side at the innocent cause of all this unnecessary fuss, as he thought.
“You’d better say no more,” replied the skipper, scornfully shouting back up to the man. “I always thought you were a fool, and now I know you are one! A drowning man, indeed! why, it’s only the broken figurehead of some old vessel or other!”
“Look, Mr McCarthy!” cried Mr Meldrum to the Irishman, who just then came up to see what all the commotion was about. “Don’t you see what it is?”
“Be jabers, I do!” responded the ex-mate, quite as much excited as the other. “Sure, an’ it’s the last of the ould ship! I wondther howsomedever it iver floated all the way here?”